Archive for the ‘Strong atheism’ Category

Well, it seems like we are simply unable to agree on the supernatural vs natural distinction. You would like to preserve the possibility of existence outside space-time, while I hold that such a thing is inconceivable, unthinkable to a creature whose very cognitive ability arises from spaciotemporal relations, and is simply a linguistic malady. I […]

Ok, so god would need to be, at a minimum, something that is not confined by laws of nature and the empirical world, i.e. supernatural. I think I can perfectly well say “god does not exist,” because I’m still using the definition of existence we apply to any other subject of that predicate. The statement […]

You ask how I can tell someone that I don’t believe in god without defining the term — whose god don’t I believe in, mine or theirs? That’s a good question. From my perspective, since I say that I don’t believe in god since I have seen no compelling proof for the existence of a […]

The problem is that the terms “rabbit” and “aliens” do not refer to a specific entity. Therefore, showing one rabbit or one group of aliens to be nonexistent does not show that all rabbits or aliens do not exist. The term “god” refers, in monotheism, to a specific entity, regardless of how one might describe […]

Well, then let’s make a preemptive strike and eliminate those definitions of god which include contradictory elements before they are even formulated. These will simply be nice boundaries, a starting framework, so to speak. I also think there is less disagreement about the definition of god than you suggest, and that the parts most widely […]

I think most theists would admit that they’d still believe in god even if they had no evidence of his existence, which is what makes such a belief faith. In fact, I do not think there are any, at best fantastically few, people who believe in god on the basis of evidence or arguments. The […]

For example, to me it is a matter of faith — something believed without proof — that the laws of physics do not change and that my perceptions are (at least in some way) a reflection of reality. I thought the common definition of “faith” is “belief without evidence,” not “belief without proof.” When discussing […]

I think it’s fine to structure our beliefs in response to arguments from others, but I do not think we should structure our beliefs, in particular standards and vocabulary, to accommodate any particular dogma. I would argue that there is a qualitative, not just quantitative, difference in the meaning of the word “faith” as it […]

Welcome back to fun stuff :) I don’t know where to start, so I think I’ll just begin with the minor points and hopefully that will take me somewhere. Well, any creator entity that would be empirically bounded would be as much God to us as a scientist would be to germs in a petri […]

In one of the notable conversations, you said something along the lines of “I have yet to meet a strong atheist.” Well you may or may not consider me as one of them. I recently had this argument with Rich Deem, one of the main people over at godandscience.org. It began as an argument over […]